And she pointed again at the chimney.
Jack nodded, though he didn't really take it in. He had a little horror of Gran at all times; but when she took on this witch-like portentousness, and whispered at him in a sharp, aged whisper, about money, hidden money, it all seemed so abnormal to him that he refused to take it for real. The queer, aged, female spirit that had schemed with money for the menfolk she chose, scheming to oust those she had not elected, was so strange and half-ghoulish, that he merely shrank from taking it in. When she pointed with her white-headed stick at the wide black mouth of the chimney, he glanced and looked quickly away again. He did not want to think of a hoard of sovereigns in a stocking—or a tin box—secreted in there. He did not want to think of the subtle, scheming, vindictive old woman reaching up into the soot, to add more gold to the hoard. It was all unnatural to him and to his generation.
But Gran despised him and his generation. It was as unreal to her as hers to him.
"Old George couldn't even persuade that Jacob of mine to sign a marriage settlement," she continued. "And I wasn't going to force him. Would you believe a man could be such an obstinate fool?"
"Yes, marm," said Jack automatically.
And Gran stamped her stick at him in sudden vicious rage.
The stamping of the stick brought Grace, and he fled.
III
That evening they were all sitting in the garden. The drawing room was thrown open, as usual on Sunday, but nobody even went in except to strum the piano. Monica was strumming hymns now. Grace came along calling Mary. Mary was staying on at Wandoo.
"Mary, Gran wants you. She feels faint. Come and see to her, will you?"